Kill your Darlings

A story of friendship, love, and murder in the early 1940s. The story recounts the pivotal year that changed Allen Ginsberg's life forever and provided the spark for him to start his creative revolution. Based on true events and characters.

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I picked up this movie to see Daniel Radcliffe. I had no idea what the movie was about. I found the acting superb. The story was one I did not know about and had not heard of the people who the movie is about. I did look up and read further about Allan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Lucien Carr. Interesting and informative.

Amazing film on the friendship of the early beat poets, Allen Ginsberg (The Fall of America - poems), Jack Kerouac (On The Road)* and Bill Burroughs (Naked Lunch)*, during WW II at Columbia University. The other main character, Lucien Carr was portrayed as the original inspiring beatnik but permanently sidelined after he was arrested for the murder of David Kammere etc. Super acting and never boring script.
*made into movies and available in DVD.

I really did look forward to seeing this but honestly, this film did not live up to it's potential. The acting was fine, the story was fine, the music was mostly fine. It was an ordinary film when it could have have been so much more considering how fascinating the beat culture really was.

I kid you not I went straight to the library and picked up as much Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Burroughs as was available to me - it's been years since On the Road and I haven't read a lot of the others. This movie is awesome. It's like the Dead Poets Society for radicals - and then one of the group does end up dead. It's not a mystery so much as a tale of, as the cover says, obsession. Allen is taken with Lucien, Lucien is better at making people extraordinary than being so himself (and it making said extraordinary people do things for him).

The period is done well, the acting is superb. If the Beat poets are your thing you are in for a treat here.

Quotes

Allen Ginsberg: Another lover hits the universe. The circle is broken. But with death comes rebirth. And like all lovers and sad people, I am a poet.

Allen Ginsberg: [reading his poem] Be careful, you are not in Wonderland. I've heard the strange madness long growing in your soul, in your isolation but you fortunate in your ignorance. You who have suffered find where love hides, give, share, lose, lest we die unbloomed.
Jack Kerouac: Allen, that was beautiful, kid.
Lucien Carr: You wrote that?
Allen Ginsberg: You asked me to.